WASHINGTON — The U.S. armed forces have seen some oddball choices for defence secretary in their time, but none like Ashton Carter.

Confirmed this month as the Pentagon’s 25th chief executive, the 60-year-old has never worn a uniform or been been part of the military class. Nothing in his education indicates he has the slightest expertise to run what is considered the most challenging department in the U.S. government.

What’s more, his confirmation hearing was not particularly encouraging. When Republican Senator John McCain, chairman of the armed services committee, asked Mr. Carter what he understood to be the administration’s strategy against the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham, his reply was at best confusing.

“I think the, um, uh, uh, strategy connects ends and means and our ends with respect to [ISIS] needs to be its lasting defeat. I say lasting because it’s important that when they get defeated they stay defeated,” he said.

“And that is why it’s important that we, uh, have, uh, uh, uh, those on the ground there who will insure that they stay defeated once defeated.”

Mr. McCain looked puzzled. “Well, that doesn’t sound like a strategy to me,” he said.

APSen. John McCain

No, it doesn’t. But U.S. President Barack Obama did not pick Mr. Carter for his military prowess. He does not want another Donald Rumsfeld dragging the county off to war.

What he wants is a leader smart enough to negotiate a bipolar U.S. Congress and ready to follow orders from his commander-in-chief. Mr. Obama can handle the strategy.

“He’s not seen as someone with extreme views,” Tony Cordesman, a defence strategy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the new defence secretary.

“One of the things he does bring to it is he has shown he can deal with the complexities involved,” he added.

“If you ask whether that is perfect, the answer is no. One thing you have to understand is this isn’t a job any one person could do perfectly under any conditions.”

In truth, Mr. Carter’s slightly goofy, stuttering presence is a total deception. Unlike his predecessor, Chuck Hagel, he is considered smart, very smart.

He has a PhD in theoretical physics from Oxford University, with an expertise in “time reversal.” Like some Doctor Who time lord, he explored the “proposition that the world could run backward,” he said in an essay about his personal career.

And backward is where he likes to go. On the flip side of his scholastic coin, he is a student of medieval history with an expertise in the use of Latin by 12th-century monastic chroniclers.

It was the scientific side of his obviously eclectic brain that first got him into the Pentagon. In 1979, with Cold War tensions again heating up, Mr. Carter signed onto a team studying ways to hide the U.S. nuclear arsenal from Soviet targeting.

One scheme he dreamed up involved blimps. He later described it in a essay: “I … examined the possibility of putting the 200,000-pound MX missiles on balloons and having them fly continuously over the United States so the Soviets would not be able to track them.”

Say that again?

“Had they been built, these 14-million-cubic-foot airships would have been the largest blimps since the Graf’s Zeppelin,” he wrote, adding, “It is now hard to believe that such things were taken seriously.”

He left the Pentagon in the early 1980s and went to work at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Soon he became embroiled in “Star Wars,” president Ronald Reagan’s missile defence initiative to build space-based shield of lasers that would shoot down incoming Soviet missiles.

Mr. Carter’s analysis showed the scheme was unworkable and, even if the death rays did work, they could easily be evaded by the Soviet Union. That caused a storm in the White House.

He later commented his early experiences in government gave him a “vivid sense of how superficial and even dishonest the ‘analysis’ behind important public policies can be.”

Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty ImagesU.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter speaks to troops during a question-and-answer session at Camp Arifjan on February 23, 2015 in Kuwait. Carter will chair a meeting on Monday of senior U.S. military officers and diplomats on the fight against ISIS.

Nuclear defence became his specialty. In 1994, he was back at the Pentagon as an advisor on the North Korean nuclear crisis. As he later wrote, it “brought us to the brink of war in the summer of 1994. I spent much of that year believing that the odds of a horribly destructive war were not less than 50-50.”

In 2007, he returned to Harvard with “no desire” to go back to the Pentagon. But Mr. Obama coaxed him back in 2009 to become undersecretary of defence for acquisition, technology and logistics. He moved up to deputy secretary of defense and now into the top job.

The Defence department is, in many ways, a nation unto itself. As Mr. Cordesman noted, it’s like no other department.

Each year, it spends more money than the defence departments from the next eight major powers combined on a massive industrial complex that includes almost every type of industry and service.

It has to manage the wellbeing of 1.4 million active duty soldiers, plus 1.1 million serving in the National Guard and Reserve forces, with their myriad of diverse skills. There are also 718,000 civilian personnel and more than two million veterans receiving benefits.

As their new overlord, Mr. Carter has to shape and reshape it to meet the challenges of a changing battlefield, not to mention Capitol Hill and its armchair generals.

It’s a bit like “being a Christian in the Coliseum,” he once wrote. “You never know when they are going to release the lions and have you torn apart for the amusement of onlookers.”

The Pentagon has successfully tested Spiderman-like climbing equipment that could one day allow American troops to scale the sides of glass buildings carrying heavy equipment.

The Z-Man program is inspired by the climbing skills of spiders and geckos and looks for ways to replicate their abilities for U.S. commandos.

Scientists have designed hand-held suction pads sturdy enough to support a full grown man as he climbs a vertical surface carrying bulky kit. The pads were tested at a lab in Massachusetts, where a 225-lb man was able to go straight up 25 feet of glass using only the paddles.

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“The gecko is one of the champion climbers in the animal kingdom, so it was natural for [the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency] to look to it for inspiration in overcoming some of the manoeuvre challenges that U.S. forces face in urban environments,” said Dr Matt Goodman.

The U.S. defence department hopes that the new equipment will replace climbing tools such as ropes and ladders, which have not advanced significantly since medieval soldiers scaled castle walls.

The Pentagon also said the new equipment would allow multiple troops to climb a wall together, while ropes or ladders forced soldiers to climb one at a time, putting the first climber at the greatest risk.

The paddles are designed to replicate the adhesives on a gecko’s toes, which are sturdy enough to hold the creature’s entire weight but also release easily to allow for rapid climbing.

“That feature is necessary for a climber to remain adhered on a surface without falling off while in the act of attaching and detaching the paddles with each movement,” according to the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The same organization is responsible for Atlas, a 6ft robotic humanoid that one day may be deployed alongside human troops on the battlefield.

The Pentagon is prepared to “respond to any contingency” after North Korea again threatened to strike targets in Guam, Hawaii and the continental U.S.

North Korea’s Supreme Command announced yesterday that it had elevated its artillery and strategic missile forces to “combat-ready posture,” adding that it was prepared to strike South Korea, Japan and U.S. territory.

North Korea said it would “show off our army and people’s stern reaction to safeguard our sovereignty and the highest dignity through military actions.”

The comments were condemned by the Pentagon as “bellicose rhetoric.”

“We are concerned by any threat raised by the North Koreans,” said George Little, a spokesman. “We take everything they say and everything they do very seriously. They need to stop threatening peace — that doesn’t help anyone.”

He added: “North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or provocations which will only further isolate North Korea and undermine international efforts to achieve peace and stability in north-east Asia. We stand ready to respond to any contingency.”

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The threats come a day after Kim Jong-un was pictured visiting military units and watched exercises on the east coast involving troops storming ashore from hovercraft and shelling targets with artillery.

The statement, via the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), said North Korea can no longer overlook Washington’s nuclear and military threats.

The U.S. and South Korea recently conducted military exercises involving a nuclear submarine and B52 bombers flying from airbases on Guam.

“The U.S. nuclear war racket has gone beyond the danger line and entered the phase of an actual war, defying the repeated warnings from the army and people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the statement said.

South Korea received another round of threats, which have become more frequent and more vitriolic since the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to step up sanctions against Pyongyang for carrying out a nuclear test in February. The KCNA report warned that the government in Seoul “should be mindful that everything will be reduced to ashes and flames the moment the first attack is unleashed.”

Despite the threats, North Korea does not have the capability to carry out its latest threat, according to experts.

James Hardy, the Asia Pacific Editor from IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, said: “From what we know of its existing inventory, North Korea has short and medium-range missiles that could complicate a situation on the Korean Peninsula — and perhaps reach Japan — but we have not seen any evidence that it has long-range missiles that could strike the continental U.S., Guam or Hawaii.”

Pyongyang’s latest threats were issued on the day that South Korea marked the third anniversary of the sinking of the corvette Cheonan in a torpedo attack blamed on the North.

Memorial ceremonies were held across the country for the 46 South Korean sailors killed when the warship exploded and sank in the Yellow Sea. North Korea maintains that it had nothing to do with the incident.

Hugo Swire, the foreign office minister, told The Daily Telegraph in Beijing that the regime in Pyongyang remains “very unpredictable” and the hope remains that Beijing might be able to intervene to rein in its neighbour.

Re: School Asked To Move Trees For Nut Allergies, Nov. 14.
As the chair of governors at a junior school in England, I happen to be in Canada for a conference, so I had a chance to read this article about a city council being asked to removing acorn trees from a school yard for the sake of children with nut allergies. I am amazed councillors are even contemplating that request. Risk is all around us, and we need to train children to take care of themselves.
There are some interesting projects in the U.K. to re-introduce risks to children in a safe manner, as part of the curriculum. Our school is looking to remove some barriers to a small stream, and bring in shingle (beach gravel consisting of large smooth pebbles) so that children learn water safety in a low risk, supervised environment. Our city is full of water safety risks, such as high-sided canal locks and defences against river flooding. Having seen Niagara Falls on this trip, I am even more determined that we teach our children to be confident in their learning about risks.
Clearly, there are parallels with nut allergies. The real world is full of nut trees, and restaurants that use nuts and other potential allergens. I only hope that councillors will instruct the school to use its playground to teach children about that real world, so that they grow up to be confident adults. Neil Lancastle, Leicester, U.K.

If this trend is taken to its logical conclusion, playgrounds will eventually become sterile areas, bereft of any trees, flowers, sand, grass, birds or even fresh air.
Canada is definitely not nut free. Jerome Henen, North Vancouver, B.C.

My son has been carrying an EpiPen since Grade 5 (he is now 21) for a wasp allergy. I did not ask my neighbours to stop planting flowers or anything else to deter the wasps in the area. Parents need to educate children, not expect the rest of us to alter our lives. Let’s start parenting and not expect the rest of the world to take responsibility for our children’s issues, Tilly Varga, Thornhill, Ont.

Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School and critic of nut policies in schools, is quoted as saying: “This is ridiculous on too many levels to even engage.”
A big “amen” to that succinct response. However; we might profit from examining the origin of fiats against nuts — school boards. Has anyone taken the trouble to enumerate the many wacky policies that have emanated from these bodies?
Perhaps we should be chopping down our school boards, not the oak trees. Patrick MacKinnon, Victoria.

I opt for levelling the mountains, lest they fall on us. Jean Parkin, Nanaimo, B.C.

David Petraeus and his ‘love pentagon’

Re: Useful On The Battlefield, George Jonas, Nov. 14.
While attending a testimonial dinner in New York in June of 2010, I had an occasion to exchange a few words with General David Petraeus, the guest of honour. His being appointed as NATO commander in Afghanistan coincided with the dismissal of the Canadian General Daniel Menard from his command of our troops serving in Afghanistan, for improper relations with a female subordinate officer.
While photographers were swirling around us, I expressed an opinion that perhaps women did not belong in front-lines in such close proximity with men in over-heated situations, and the kind of entanglements these encounters tend to lead to are only natural. My comment elicited an uproarious guffaw from the General and (naturally) a politically acceptable retort, something to the effect that the military has its rules and soldiers are obliged to submit to that discipline.
My recollection of this episode was prompted by Gen. Petraeus’ present travails.
Of course, there’s military discipline and then there is tension between men and nature. With that tension, nature will always have its way. Nathan Shuster, Toronto.

George Jonas is of the view that President Barack Obama should not have accepted the resignation of CIA chief David Petraeus. I think the President did the right thing. Mr. Petraeus is not a war-time leader, where the survival of a nation hangs in the balance. He is replaceable. Both men realize that this scandal will diminish the authority of Mr. Petraeus and how those working for the CIA will view his leadership. They know that this will be a huge distraction for Mr. Petraeus as he deals with the trauma he has inflicted on his family and the trauma they may now inflict upon him. They know that the media circus attendant with this scandal will not run its course until the made for TV movie, that is bound to follow, is in reruns.
All in all, they both know that Mr. Petraeus can no longer effectively do his job. Its time to go. Charles Evans, Toronto.

Re: Pentagon Ties, infographic by Richard Johnson, Nov. 14.
The National Post continues to out-do itself with original graphics. Wednesday’s paper shows the love pentagon (pun intended) between Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley and company, and their reticulated and decussated web of relationships. The only link missing is that between Gen. John Allen and the shirtless FBI agent. Now, wouldn’t that be something. Joel Dick, Toronto.

Israel has endured enough missiles

Re: Rocket First Traumatizes Israelis, Nov. 14.
Kudos to the National Post for printing an article that depicts the traumatic situation that is the life of hundreds of thousands of Israelis every day.
When I was studying in southern Israel from 2008-2010, sirens would warn us of an incoming missiles, forcing us to run to bomb shelters. Often, there was not enough time for us all and we had to settle for hiding under desks and behind pillars, knowing that we could not withstand a direct hit but hoping that we would be protected from the debris.
It is absurd that Israelis have to live under and endure these conditions. Israel has every right protect its citizens and inhabitants, and should exercise that right.Eytan Dishy, Thornhill, Ont.

Canadians give through our taxes

Re: Making It Easier To Donate, editorial, Nov. 13.
The Canadian media should quit this annual national guilt trip about charitable giving. Americans donate at twice our rate because their total taxable income, including sales taxes and GST, on average is half of the equivalent Canadian’s burden.
We expect our taxes to cover more social costs, which they do on balance. Our charitable donations should be left to those who can afford to give more.
Peter Braid’s private member’s bill, laudable as it may be, is not likely to change this reality. John C. Clarke, Guelph, Ont.

Tories: A veteran’s best friend

Re: Remember And Care For Our Veterans, editorial, Nov. 10.
Some of the commentary concerning Ottawa’s support for veterans is a bit off the mark, based on my experience with Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC).
I am a veteran and for many years have received a small pension for an injury received while serving in Korea. The policy then (Liberal government) was that applicants for consideration were subjected to myriad hoops to jump through. On my third application, I appeared before a two-woman committee who viewed my claim, listened to my advocate and questioned me. After an hour or so, they approved my application. At no time was a politician involved. At each step of the journey of frustration I dealt with bureaucrats who seemed to have taken on the mantle of a god and cherished their position of being able to grant or deny a veteran’s application.
Interestingly, under a Conservative government, those hoops seemed to become fewer and fewer. When I made my second application for another claim, I was greeted with respect and my claim was passed along with what seemed to be warp speed to the point that I received a telephone call from a front-line bureaucrat who wanted to know why I had not made an appointment to have a hearing test done. The difference in attitude between a former government and the current one with regard to how I was treated was night and day.
I recognize that Veteran Affair Canada’s decision to provide a lump sum to veterans was not a wise one, but I suspect the number crunchers in the VAC pushed for it. That policy has now been reversed, I believe, and the policy reverted to the monthly allotment for life. Bob Orrick, Richmond, B.C..

Protect identities until a conviction is reached

Re: Acquitted By The Courts, Convicted By Google, Jonathan Kay, Nov. 13.
I went through a nasty divorce and I am thankful that the proceedings were not publicized. However, I frequently read stories about people (mostly men) who are charged with crimes based on spurious information. On many occasions, the charges are dropped, but the lives of the accused are ruined. This is a crime in itself. I am a law-and-order type of person but fairness and justice are paramount.
The media, nosy do-gooders and the cops won’t like it but I have a simple solution to the problem. Publication of the names of defendants in criminal proceedings should be prohibited in all forms of media, whether it be billboards, posters, notices, print media, radio, television, Internet or otherwise, unless defendants are found guilty and have not filed an appeal. Problem solved; except for the whining of the media. But I don’t care about them anyway. Adrian Lipsey, Burnaby, B.C.

Congratulations to ‘Pte.’ Taumy

Re: ‘We Could Just See The Bullets,’ Nov. 14.
I wish to extend my personal commendation to Private Taumy St.-Hilarie of the Royal 22nd Regiment, for his selfless action in extremely dangerous circumstances in rescuing an Afghan father and son. Having experienced as a parent the knowledge that our son has been selected by the Australian Governor-General for a comparable Bravery Award for a civilian action, I am absolutely sure Pte. Hilarie’s parents will, as do we, experience an immense pride in our sons’ response to the vulnerable exigency of the moment. William Phillips, Halifax.

A great article about a very brave young man. However, I must take issue with several items in the story. In Canada, the rank of private is abbreviated as “pte.,” not “pvt.” The latter is used by American soldiers. And as an old Canadian paratrooper who trained, lived and parachuted with the Vandoos of 1 Commando, Canadian Airborne Regiment, I never thought of them as” legendary.” They did their job like everyone else.
Pte. Taumy St-Hilaire is a great Canadian and a proud member of his regiment. Bravo! Scott Paterson, Kemptville, Ont.

B.C. is in a state of ‘omnishambles’

Re: Off The Top, Nov. 14.
B.C. Premier Christy Clark has finally, although unwittingly, contributed something of passing value to the English speaking world. The Oxford University Press chose the word of the year to be “omnishambles,” defined as “a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations.” Even if the Brits don’t know who was the inspiration for this word, British Columbians certainly do. Since Clark became leader of the BC Liberal party, her provincial government has become an omnishambles. Lloyd Atkins, Vernon, B.C.

Do poppies ‘blow’ or ‘grow’ III

Re: Do Poppies ‘Blow’ Or ‘Grow’ In Flanders? (part II), letters to the editor, Nov. 14.
Last year I visited the field station in Flanders, Belgium, where John McCrae wrote his famous poem. There is a bronze replica of the poem nearby, and my photograph clearly shows that in the first line the poppies “blow,” whereas the final two lines are: “We will not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields.” Wendy Bonus, Thornhill, Ont.

I think the answer is that John McCrae himself wasn’t sure. Certainly, the Wikipedia sidebar does show it as “grow”, and apparently this version is dated 1919. At some time, from some newspaper, I cut the attached, dated 1915, which clearly says “blow.” Maybe he tweaked it between 1915 and 1919? Cherry Rowlands, North Vancouver, B.C.

Whatever Dr. McCrae originally wrote, it should be “blow.” “Grow” is pedestrian, but “blow” creates an image. More poetic. Of course, in Canada, we should ask what is the French version, eh? David Gorrell, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

Alcohol is worse than marijuana

Re: How Dangerous Is Marijuana?, letter to the editor, Nov. 13.
In response to letter-writer Al King’s question, marijuana is far less damaging than other legally available substances, such as alcohol, to our personal health and society. While marijuana smoke from a joint may contain 50%-70% more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than smoke from a cigarette, the majority of recreational marijuana users don’t smoke more than one joint and some even choose a more natural intake method (e.g., cooking with it or vapourizing).
Compare that to the long-term medical effects and drain on the health system of (legally) smoking a pack of cigarettes per day. A. Thompson, Matheson, Ont.

Not all the gossip in Washington is about David Petraeus’s sex life. Some of it is also about whether President Barack Obama will spoil John Kerry’s dream of becoming secretary of state.

There is, of course, already a secretary of state, named Hillary Clinton. But Mrs. Clinton has said she plans to step down (and may start running for president, though she says she wants to rest first). Sen. Kerry would like to take her place, and has a strong claim on the job. He has vast experience in foreign affairs, is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and has been unflinchingly loyal and supportive of Mr. Obama.

The other day the Washington Post reported that Sen. Kerry was indeed under consideration for a job in the new administration… but as defense secretary. Mr. Kerry hasn’t said anything publicly, but word is he doesn’t want to be defense secretary, he wants state. State carries prestige and lots of travel; defense is likely to get stuck overseeing inevitable downsizing at the Pentagon. This has roused considerable indignation among Democrat thinkers, who are divided into two camps: one that says he should get the job he wants; the other that says it would be nuts for the president to let him have either job.

Mr. Kerry was the Democratic party presidential nominee in 2004. He’s also the one credited with handing the keynote speech at the 2004 convention to Mr. Obama, who was still a little known Illinois state senator at the time. Blogger and broadcast David Shuster wrote it would be “incredibly disloyal to Kerry and remarkably tone deaf politically” for Obama to send him to defense after all Kerry has done for the president.

John Kerry is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He doesn’t even serve on the Armed Services Committee. Oh, and his military service was more than 40 years ago. Adding insult to injury in the story about Kerry being considered for secretary of defense is the report that President Obama wants U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to take the secretary of state job that Kerry wants.

Though Rice is qualified, says Shuster, she was also lead spokesperson on the Benghazi attack, and her nomination hearing would be certain to sink into “a nasty and brutal confrontation over the administration’s false Benghazi narrative that she helped to perpetuate.”

Another liberal blogger, Jamelle Bouie, argues Obama “must have the mettle to crush John Kerry’s dreams … Seriously, don’t out the dude in your cabinet.” Bouie, like a number of others, notes that removing Kerry from his Senate seat would open the door for another big whoopsie like the 2010 special election that let Republican Scott Brown fill out the rest of Democrat Ted Kennedy’s term. Brown was defeated on Nov. 6, but his arrival in 2010 almost scuppered Obama’s health care plan, and he remains popular enough that he might just manage to get elected again if a vote has to be held to replace Kerry. Even though the Democrats now have a larger majority in the Senate than they did before Nov. 6, says Bouie, “If there’s anything Obama should have learned in his first time, it’s that the larger the legislative majority, the better. …There are relatively few people who can run and win statewide races. Even if the state is reliably blue, it’s too much of a risk; a freak Republican win in Rhode Island, for example, could jeopardize whatever Obama is trying to shepherd through Congress.”

Yet another Democrat-friendly voice, the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein, professes astonishment that the White House would even consider plucking Kerry from the Senate. Obama did the same thing in 2009 when he removed popular Democrats from Colorado, Arizona and Kansas to serve in the first-term administration, and paid the price later in lost votes, he says.

Elevating Kerry to Defense Secretary would trigger another special election — and given that the demographics of special elections tilt Republican, and that Brown is popular statewide, he might well win it. And given that Democrats are defending 20 Senate seats in 2014 and Republicans are defending only 13, that may be the difference between Harry Reid as majority leader and Mitch McConnell as majority leader.

The Boston Globe writes that hiring Kerry would also put Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick in a bind. When Kennedy died, Patrick and other Democrats changed the law so the governor could immediately appoint an interim replacement before the special vote could be held. Patrick was careful to specify that no one seeking to permanently replace Kennedy would be considered for the interim post, to avoid the appearance of favouritism. But given what happened next, i.e. an upset GOP victory, he might want to rethink that, suggests the Globe, especially given that Brown is now so well known he’d have a de facto advantage over Democrat challengers, and the Democrats already deployed their best candidate against him on Nov. 6.

Curiously, none of this Machiavellian manoeuvring appears to have penetrated the anti-Obama strategists at Fox News, who apparently haven’t realized that getting Kerry out of the Senate could be good for Republicans, and were reported to already be swift-boating Kerry again in hopes of sinking his hopes for an administration job. People, that’s the sort of thinking that got Obama a second term. Listen up!

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-obama-may-swift-boat-john-kerrys-hopes-of-being-secretary-of-state/feed0stdSen. John Kerry is said to be under consideration as defense secretary in the second Obama administrationKelly McParland: Obama has no taste for a war with Bashar Assadhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-obama-has-no-taste-for-a-war-with-bashar-assad
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-obama-has-no-taste-for-a-war-with-bashar-assad#commentsFri, 01 Jun 2012 17:36:08 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=80324

It’s difficult to imagine the United States getting actively involved in direct military action against Syria, despite the resurgence of killing and what has been interpreted as sabre-rattling by the U.S. envoy to the UN.

Susan Rice painted a bleak picture of the prospects for peace following the massacre in Houla a week ago.

With the wheels coming off a UN ceasefire plan, she said, it was likely the conflict would become a proxy war with Russia arming the Syrians and western powers supporting the opposition. At which point “members of the international community are left with the option only of having to consider whether they’re prepared to take action outside the Annan plan and the authority of [the UN}.

She didn’t spell out what that “action” might be, but it was interpreted in some quarters at a hint at western military action. That seems unlikely. It goes against everything we’ve learned of the attitudes in the Obama administration, which spent much of its first term plotting how to remove U.S. soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Neither of those wars are viewed as glorious victories. Washington was relieved to get its troops out of Iraq before it could collapse further into sectarian violence. It is similarly hoping to complete the withdrawal from Afghanistan with enough trained local forces left behind to hold off the Taliban for a respectable period. The last thing Mr. Obama could want is to re-commit troops to another foreign adventure, and in a country to which Americans see no more natural ties than they did to the previous two.

There was a good reason George W. Bush sent the U.S. Into Afghanistan – to avenge the 9/11 tragedy and hunt down its mastermind. Many fewer understood the reasoning for the Iraq adventure, and would be no more likely to appreciate the necessity of risking additional American lives for Syria, which is at least as obscure to most American’s as Saddam Hussein’s regime ever was.

Mr. Obama shows no personal inclination towards pitched battles. He prefers the safety of distance. At the moment his campaign team is busy leaking details of programs that underline that preference. Two New York Times “scoops” this week – both smelling of White House stage management – revealed that the president personally oversees the drone campaign against terrorist leaders, signing off on the targets to be killed, and that it was Obama who ordered a mysterious cyber attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Both allowed the U.S. to strike from afar, with no risk of domestic casualties or body bags being shipped back to the U.S. Similarly, Mr. Obama had to be pressured into joining the international campaign to oust Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and went along only reluctantly. That mission involved actual boats and planes lobbing missiles at enemy fighters, but the safety factor remained: there were no U.S. troops on the ground (as least not that anyone would admit) and the risk of casualties was minimal. Even then, Mr. Obama might have resisted if not for the eagerness of European allies in France and England to get involved. Neither is likely to repeat the performance: France’s Nicolas Sarkozy was recently defeated and replaced by the less-excitable socialist candidate, Francois Hollande. He and Britain’s David Cameron have a European currency and debt crisis on their hands and plenty of domestic worries to keep them occupied without trying to take on Syria.

If the relatively limited risks of Libya were almost too much for Mr. Obama, he’s hardly likely to be comfortable with the much greater threat represented by Syria. President Bashar al-Assad reputedly has compiled enormous stores of chemical weapons as a counter-balance to neighbouring Israel’s nuclear capabilities. Yes, we heard the same thing said about Iraq, but in Syria’s case there seems wider acceptance that the reports are true, and, besides, would anyone want to bet a war that they’re not?

Certainly not Mr. Obama, and especially given the uncertainty that would entail a military strike. The Arab Spring, while much hailed in the West, has little record so far of replacing old regimes with more attractive new ones. Egypt’s future remains up in the air, a tug of war between the military and an array of Islamic challengers. Libya’s transitional government is still struggling for control over armed militias. Mr. Assad is at least a known quantity, with whom the West is accustomed to dealing. Lord knows who or what would succeed him.

There is also the less-than-minor matter of Russia, recently returned to the grip of the flinty-eyed president Vladimir Putin, who has a military base in Syria to protect, along with massive arms sales and a deep store of distrust and hostility towards the western powers. Last month Russia’s top military officer threatened a pre-emptive strike against a NATO missile shield program in Eastern Europe, and this week test-fired a ballistic missile it said was designed to overcome those defences. It’s unimaginable that Mr. Putin would seriously contemplate starting a war with the U.S., but the last thing a U.S. president seeking re-election on a promise to return economic stability needs would be coinciding crises in the Middle East and Moscow.

So, whatever further outrages take place in Syria, Mr. Assad seems unlikely to have to contemplate American troops bearing down on Damascus. U.S. weaponry, maybe. U.S. surrogates possibly. U.S. sanctions certainly. But if someone is going to oust him, it almost certainly won’t be Barack Obama.

A very strange story, a 6,000-word front-page New York Times piece on how, every Tuesday, Barack Obama shuffles “baseball cards” with the pictures and bios of suspected terrorists from around the world and chooses who shall die by drone strike. He even reserves for himself the decision of whether to proceed when the probability of killing family members or bystanders is significant.

The article could have been titled “Barack Obama: Drone Warrior.” Great detail on how Obama personally runs the assassination campaign. On-the-record quotes from the highest officials. This was no leak. This was a White House press release.

Why? To portray Obama as tough guy. And why now? Because in crisis after recent crisis, Obama has looked particularly weak: standing helplessly by as thousands are massacred in Syria; being played by Iran in nuclear negotiations, now reeling with the collapse of the latest round in Baghdad; being treated with contempt by Vladimir Putin, who blocks any action on Syria or Iran and adds personal insult by standing up Obama at the latter’s G-8 and NATO summits.

The Obama camp thought that any political problem with foreign policy would be cured by the Osama bin Laden operation. But the administration’s attempt to politically exploit the raid’s one-year anniversary backfired, earning ridicule and condemnation for its crude appropriation of the heroic acts of others.

A campaign ad had Bill Clinton praising Obama for the courage of ordering the raid because, had it failed and Americans been killed, “the downside would have been horrible for him.” Outraged veterans released a response ad pointing out that it would have been considerably more horrible for the dead SEALs. Obama only compounded the self-aggrandizement problem when he spoke a week later about the military “fighting on my behalf.”

The Osama-slayer card having been vastly overplayed, what to do? A new card: Obama, drone warrior, steely and solitary, delivering death with cool dispatch to the rest of the al-Qaeda depth chart.

So the peacemaker, Nobel laureate, nuclear disarmer, apologizer to the world for America having lost its moral way when it harshly interrogated the very people Obama now kills, has become — just in time for the 2012 campaign — Zeus the Avenger, smiting by lightning strike.

A rather strange ethics. You go around the world preening about how America has turned a new moral page by electing a president profoundly offended by George W. Bush’s belligerence and prisoner maltreatment, and now you’re ostentatiously telling the world that you personally play judge, jury and executioner to unseen combatants of your choosing, and whatever innocents happen to be in their company.

This is not to argue against drone attacks. In principle, they are fully justified. No quarter need be given to terrorists who wear civilian clothes, hide among civilians and target civilians indiscriminately. But it is to question the moral amnesia of those whose delicate sensibilities were offended by the Bush methods that kept America safe for a decade — and who now embrace Obama’s campaign of assassination by remote control.

Moreover, there is an acute military problem. Dead terrorists can’t talk.

Drone attacks are cheap — which is good. But the path of least resistance has a cost. It yields no intelligence about terror networks or terror plans.

One capture could potentially make us safer than 10 killings. But because of the moral incoherence of Obama’s war on terror, there are practically no captures anymore. What would be the point? There’s nowhere for the CIA to interrogate. And what would they learn even if they did, Obama having decreed a new regime of kid-gloves, name-rank-and-serial-number interrogation?

This administration came out opposing military tribunals, wanting to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York, reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights and trying mightily (and unsuccessfully, there being — surprise! — no plausible alternative) to close Guantanamo. Yet alongside this exquisite delicacy about the rights of terrorists is the campaign to kill them in their beds.

You festoon your prisoners with rights — but you take no prisoners. The morality is perverse. Which is why the results are so mixed. We do kill terror operatives, an important part of the war on terror, but we gratuitously forfeit potentially life-saving intelligence.

But that will cost us later. For now, we are to bask in the moral seriousness and cool purpose of our drone warrior president.

Good news: Foreign Policy magazine may solve the dilemma for you. The Washington-based magazine demonstrates that Canadian opponents aren’t alone in thinking the “fifth generation fighter” (which sounds significant but really only means there were four earlier ones, kind of like owning a “fifth generation Oldsmobile”) is a disaster waiting to happen. In “The Jet that Ate the Pentagon” it pretty much dismembers the argument for the plane, largely on the basis that it will be insanely expensive (even more insanely than the costs known at present, and which the federal government sought valiantly to disguise by letting Defence Minister Peter MacKay be in charge). And besides the expense, it says, the planes don’t work very well, and aren’t likely to.

Here’s a taste of the snowballing expense:

Overall, the program’s cost has grown75 percent from its original 2001 estimate of $226.5 billion — and that was for a larger buy of 2,866 aircraft.

Hundreds of F-35s will be built before 2019, when initial testing is complete. The additional cost to engineer modifications to fix the inevitable deficiencies that will be uncovered is unknown, but it is sure to exceed the $534 million already known from tests so far. The total program unit cost for each individual F-35, now at $161 million, is only a temporary plateau. Expect yet another increase in early 2013, when a new round of budget restrictions is sure to hit the Pentagon, and the F-35 will take more hits in the form of reducing the numbers to be bought, thereby increasing the unit cost of each plane.

A final note on expense: The F-35 will actually cost multiples of the $395.7 billion cited above. That is the current estimate only to acquire it, not the full life-cycle cost to operate it. The current appraisal for operations and support is $1.1 trillion — making for a grand total of $1.5 trillion, or more than the annual GDP of Spain.

And that’s only so far. It’s based on predictions the F-35 will be 42% more expensive to operate than the F-16. But the F-22, a less complicated “fifth generation” aircraft proved to be 300% more expensive. Besides, says the magazine, thanks to layer on layer of additional requirements added by the Clinton administration in the early days of planning and design, the F-35 has become a cumbersome “flying piano” that has little chance of ever achieving the impossible standards set for it.

The bottom line: The F-35 is not the wonder its advocates claim. It is a gigantic performance disappointment, and in some respects a step backward. The problems, integral to the design, cannot be fixed without starting from a clean sheet of paper.

Even if nothing else goes wrong, the F-35 would account for 38% of Pentagon procurement for defense programs, according to Foreign Policy, and this at a time the Pentagon faces serious cuts to bring U.S. budget spending back to something resembling sanity.

The U.S. Pentagon is establishing a fast-track acquisition process that would enable it to develop new cyber warfare capabilities within days or months if urgently needed, the Defense Department said in a report to Congress.

The process, which would be overseen by a new senior-level Cyber Investment Management Board, aims to streamline the sluggish traditional defense acquisition process to meet the rapid pace of events in cyberspace, the 16-page report said.

Congress, in defense legislation enacted last year, directed the Pentagon to develop a strategy that would enable it to speedily acquire cyber warfare tools, applications and other capabilities. The Pentagon sent a report to Congress late last month outlining the strategy.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters on Thursday, said the Pentagon’s acquisition process for cyber warfare capabilities will be divided into two paths – one rapid and one deliberate – that would be used depending on urgency.

“The framework allows for alternative acquisition processes to be tailored to the complexity, cost, urgency of need and fielding timeline associated with developing the cyber warfare capability being developed,” the report said.

“Programs with higher risk and longer fielding times, and therefore greater cost and complexity, will be managed with greater oversight and more centralized approvals,” it said.

Under the process, cyber needs could be identified and put forward by many different organizations within the department.

U.S. Cyber Command, the combatant command set up nearly two years ago to defend military networks and carry out offensive cyber operations if ordered, would validate the needs. Teams at Cyber Command would decide which acquisition track to follow.

The rapid approach would generally be used “in response to urgent, mission-critical needs in support of current operations or emerging threats,” the report said.

It would take advantage of previously developed and acquired capabilities, or nearly mature capabilities under development by industry, it said.

To meet short operational timelines, some traditional acquisition requirements could be postponed or eliminated, like planning documents or certain testing activity, the report said.

The deliberate process would include “more time for acquisition planning, consideration and analysis of options,” but it would still be speedier than the timeline for most military weapons purchase, the report said.

The Pentagon will establish storage spaces for holding cyber warfare tools and applications, sites that could be used as platforms for collaboration. Cyber Command would be required to maintain a registry of cyber warfare tools.

The Cyber Investment Management Board is being established to oversee the process and coordinate investments in cyber warfare capabilities across the Defense Department, the report said.

The new board is needed in part because the cost of most cyber warfare tools is less than the threshold that would require oversight by other Pentagon processes, like the Major Defense Acquisition Program.

The Cyber Investment Management Board would be jointly chaired by Frank Kendall, acting undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics; James Miller, acting undersecretary of Defense for Policy; and Admiral James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The report said some aspects of the new process are already in place, but many of them, including establishment of the oversight board, would be rolled out over the next six months.

Sen. John McCain was in full cry the other day, lecturing Leon Panetta, the U.S. defence secretary, on the lack of “leadership” being exhibited on the issue of Syria. Panetta had just finished explaining to a Senate armed services committee that the Obama administration recognized that armed intervention might become necessary, and was preparing for it, but preferred to keep “focusing on diplomatic and political approaches rather than a military intervention.”

You could see McCain getting agitated. “Let me tell you what’s wrong with your statement,” he said.“You don’t mention American leadership. Americans should lead in this, America should be standing up. America should be building coalitions, we shouldn’t have statements like we are not going to intervene no matter what the situation is, such has been up until now the statements by the administration and the president.”

“…in past experiences, those that I mentioned before, America has led. Yes, it has been multilateral and multinational, this is absolutely vital. We’re not leading Mr. Secretary.”

Panetta had already made clear that the White House was trying to coordinate its response with its allies, because you don’t just go marching into Syria and smacking around Bashar al Assad without mentioning it to the rest of Europe or the Middle East, so that part of McCain’s lecture made no sense. What he clearly wanted were some bombs falling on Damascus. “Leading” to McCain means bombing the crap out of dictators, like in Iraq and Libya, and maybe Afghanistan too, though that was more about terrorism. It doesn’t mean pussyfooting around with diplomacy.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer, who really doesn’t have much time for Obama, has similar feelings regarding the administration’s Iran policy. Benjamin Netanyahu had been in Washington this week, looking for a sign the U.S. would accept an Israeli attack on Iran, and asking for bunker-buster bombs that could improve its hopes of disabling Iran’s underground nuclear sites. Obama offered the bombs, but on the condition Israel wait a year before attacking.

“Revealing and shocking,” Krauthammer wrote of the decision. Why was the U.S. holding Israel back? “The world’s greatest exporter of terror (according to the State Department), the systematic killer of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, the self-declared enemy that invented “Death to America Day” is approaching nuclear capability — and the focus of U.S. policy is to prevent a democratic ally threatened with annihilation from pre-empting the threat?” He concluded it was all about re-election: the president just wanted to protect his backside until after the election in November.

How easy it is to throw around lives when you’re not actually in power (as McCain, remember, might have been if he’d beaten Obama in 2008). Just rain down some bombs on the bad guys. It will all work out, the U.S. knows how to handle military matters. Just look at the record.

Like Iraq — because that worked out so well? Or Afghanistan? In both those cases the U.S. was up against enemies with much less firepower than Syria and Iran could muster. (Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out that Syria has five times the air defences Libya had, covering a fifth the terrain). And neither Iraq or Afghanistan had the ability to cripple an already wounded world economy by shutting off the energy flow.

So let’s say Israel attacks Iran. There are plenty of analysts who say it might not make any difference: Tehran has clearly prepared for that possibility and might be capable of continuing its nuclear program nonetheless. Forget about Israel’s supposed military invincibility, that myth has been several times disproven. The only near-certainty from an Israeli assault would be a regional firestorm with incalculable results, Arab versus Jew, Islam versus the West, inevitably drawing the U.S. into a cauldron of hate with a very high potential for economic and human devastation.

That’s leadership? Insanity, more like. Panetta tried to explain that, as defence secretary, he has a duty to be “very sure that we know what the mission is. I’ve got to make very sure that we know whether we can achieve that mission, what price and whether or not it will make matters better or worse. ”

One of the main reasons given for the disaster that developed after the U.S. had defeated Iraq’s army was the very lack of that sort of preparation. The Bush administration didn’t bother making plans for what to do next, figuring Iraqis would be so overwhelmingly grateful for the elimination of Saddam Hussein that it would all just work itself out. So it made a series of horrific blunders that extended the violence and resulted in thousands of dead troops and maybe hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians.

And Afghanistan? What was the exit strategy there? Kill Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden and get out? Great — except it took a decade to find bin Laden, and Mullah Omar is still out there somewhere. Meanwhile, the West’s great strategic pal, Hamid Karzai, has just endorsed an edict formally relegating Afghan women to second-class status, in hopes it will ease the way to talks with the same Taliban that NATO’s lost lives were supposed to eliminate.

The lesson in every recent military venture the U.S. has engaged in has been to know your enemy, plan beyond the initial attack, establish a clear and achievable goal, designate an exit strategy beforehand, and co-ordinate as much as possible with allies to ensure there is broad international political and military support. The alternative — attacking first, making it up as you go along, and worrying about the consequences later — produces the kind of decade-long agony the U.S. is only now extricating itself from.

None of these lessons appear to have imprinted themselves on Republican thinking. Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, blithely promises that if he’s elected, Iran will not succeed in obtaining a nuclear bomb. His strategy — heightened sanctions, tighten the diplomatic screws, keep U.S. naval forces nearby, confer with allies and keep the option of military action open — is identical to Obama’s, but with greater emphasis on sabre-rattling: “My foreign policy plan to avert this catastrophe is plain: Either the ayatollahs will get the message, or they will learn some very painful lessons about the meaning of American resolve,” he declares. No wonder Obama feels the need to warn his opponents that bluster doesn’t win wars.

“This is not a game, and there’s nothing casual about it,” he said. “When I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I’m reminded of the costs involved in war.”

You won’t catch Obama in a flak jacket, strutting around the deck of an aircraft carrier boasting “Mission accomplished.” Maybe if that president had taken war more seriously there would have been less of it, and many fewer casualties. For all Obama’s domestic troubles, his overseas effectiveness has been notable, removing the U.S. from messes left behind by the Republicans, finally eliminating bin Laden, reducing the count of active terrorists while risking far fewer military lives, joining in the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi without turning it into an all-American extravaganza, and resisting the temptation to portray the U.S. as the all-powerful global policeman, which it isn’t. Given a choice between Obama, or McCain, Romney or any of the other Republican chest-beaters, I’d say Obama’s are the safer pair of hands.

Ottawa is said to be considering equipping the Air Force with armed drones as part of an effort to replace the aging CF-18 fighter jets. The original plan was to replace them with 65 F-35s, but that problem has been beset by cost overruns and production delays. While the Harper government has remained resolutely behind the F-35 purchase, news has emerged out of Washington that the United States is beginning to cancel or delay orders for the advanced stealth fighter jets. This is a game-changer — it’s one thing for Italy or Israel to get cold feet, but if America pulls the plug on the program, the entire calculus of the F-35’s economics could change rapidly. And not in Canada’s favour.

It is entirely prudent for the government to be considering other options. And the RCAF should certainly add armed drones to its inventory of aircraft. Armed drones have already proven their worth many times, first in counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but increasingly as the long arm of President Obama’s reach into Pakistan’s Taliban-infested northern regions. But Canada must very carefully consider the risks of investing a significant percentage of its limited military budget into something as risky as an unmanned combat platform. As the U.S. recently learned, drones sometimes end up suddenly changing sides.

Last December, Iran announced that it had shot down a U.S. RQ-170 drone over its territory. There was nothing new about that, and nor was it particularly alarming — an advantage of using drones for reconnaissance is that if the enemy does blow one up, you don’t necessarily need to respond with a retaliatory strike, as would be far more likely if a pilot (with a family and an elected representative and a Facebook page) was killed or captured. It also helps avoid a repetition of the awkward Gary Francis Powers incident of the Cold War, where an American spyplane pilot was shot down over the Soviet Union. When America denied the flight had ever occurred, the Soviets displayed a very much alive Powers to the media, humiliating the United States. Having a drone blown out of the sky isn’t nearly as complex. You just build another drone.

After several days, however, it became clear that there was more to the story than we had first been led to believe. Iran hadn’t shot down the drone at all. It had done something much worse — it had hacked the drone, and seized control of it. Iranian ground controllers, having assumed command of the drone, were able to successfully land it in their territory as a prize. Now, one of the most advanced pieces of spy technology in the United States’ military inventory, loaded with all sorts of high-tech monitoring and communications gear, is being reverse-engineered by a hostile regime. Worse: You can be certain that Iran will have no qualms about sharing access with whatever it learns, or perhaps even the drone itself, with Chinese and Russian engineers. Just a small way of saying thanks for all the missiles and UN vetoes Iran’s friends have provided over the years. (Early consideration of sending in U.S. commandos to blow up the drone, or destroying it from afar with an airstrike, were rejected for fear of triggering an all-out war and because U.S. officials hoped that Iran wouldn’t know what to do with the technology — but the Russians and Chinese will likely have no such problems.)

Clearly, unmanned, remotely controlled aircraft are not as secure as we’d like. America is the most technologically advanced country in the world, Iran, not so much. And yet the smaller, less advanced nation was still able to not only bypass the undoubtedly intense security built into the RQ-170, but then actually seize control of it and capture it with ease. That’s a major breach of U.S. security — but it’s also an object lesson. If the drone had been armed, the Iranians would have suddenly been in command of advanced U.S. missiles and targeting systems.

That’s terrifying just as a theory. Now imagine a different scenario: Instead of a long-range recon drone, a hostile power is able to hack into an armed drone that is providing cover to friendly troops, and turn that drone’s weapons against the very troops it was supposed to be guarding and assisting.

Armed drones will only ever be as secure and reliable as the latest communication code protecting their computers. There are going to be situations where you simply need to keep a real-life human being in the cockpit, to avoid any such high-tech trickery. Canada should absolutely consider acquiring unmanned armed drones, and adding that niche capability to its inventory. But as far as these unmanned vehicles have come, they are not yet ready to replace manned aircraft in every military scenario. As much as the Harper government would like to save the cash that would otherwise need to be invested in purchasing a new fleet of warplanes, there’s no option. Drones simply aren’t ready to take over the job.

Through 11 presidential elections, beginning with the Democrats’ nomination of George McGovern in 1972, Republicans have enjoyed a presumption of superiority regarding national security. This year, however, events and their rhetoric are dissipating their advantage.

Hours — not months, not weeks, hours — after the last U.S. troops left Iraq, vicious political factionalism and sectarian violence intensified. Many Republicans say Barack Obama’s withdrawal — accompanied by his administration’s foolish praise of Iraq’s “stability” — has jeopardized what has been achieved there. But if it cannot survive a sunrise without fraying, how much of an achievement was it?

Few things so embitter a nation as squandered valor, hence Americans, with much valor spent there, want Iraq to master its fissures. But with America in the second decade of its longest war, the probable Republican nominee is promising to extend it indefinitely.

Mitt Romney opposes negotiations with the Taliban while they “are killing our soldiers.” Which means: No negotiations until the war ends, when there will be nothing about which to negotiate. “We don’t,” he says, “negotiate from a position of weakness as we are pulling our troops out.” That would mean stopping the drawdown of U.S. forces — except Romney would not negotiate even from a position of strength: “We should not negotiate with the Taliban. We should defeat the Taliban.” How could that be achieved in a second decade of war? What metrics would establish “defeat”? Details to come, perhaps.

The U.S. defense budget is about 43% of the world’s total military spending — more than the combined defense spending of the next 17 nations, many of which are U.S. allies. Are Republicans really going to warn voters that America will be imperiled if the defense budget is cut 8% from projections over the next decade? In 2017, defense spending would still be more than that of the next 10 countries.

Do Republicans think it is premature to withdraw up to 7,000 troops from Europe two decades after the Soviet Union’s death? About 73,000 will remain, most of them in prosperous, pacific, largely unarmed and utterly unthreatened Germany. Why do so many remain?

Since 2001, the United States has waged war in three nations, and some Republicans appear ready to bring the total to five, adding Iran and Syria. (The Weekly Standard, of neoconservative bent, regrets that Obama “is reluctant to intervene to oust Iran’s closest ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”) GOP critics say Obama’s proposed defense cuts will limit America’s ability to engage in troop-intensive nation-building. Most Americans probably say: Good.

Critics say defense cuts will limit America’s ability to intervene abroad as it has recently done. Well. Even leaving aside Iraq and Afghanistan, do Americans want defense spending to enable a rump of NATO — principally, Britain and France — to indulge moral ambitions and imperial nostalgia in Libya, and perhaps elsewhere, using U.S. materiel and competence?

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the Army should contract from 570,000 soldiers to 490,000 in a decade. Romney says the military should have 100,000 more troops than it does. (The Army is 88,000 larger than it was before Afghanistan and Iraq.) Romney may be right, but he should connect that judgment to specific assessments of threats and ambitions.

Romney says: “It is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” that if he is elected Iran will not get such a weapon, and if Obama is re-elected it will. He also says Obama “has made it very clear that he’s not willing to do those things necessary to get Iran to be dissuaded from” its nuclear ambitions.” Romney may, however, be premature in assuming the futility of new sanctions the Obama administration is orchestrating, and Panetta says Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is “unacceptable” and “a red line for us” and if “we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon, then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it.” What, then, is the difference between Romney and Obama regarding Iran?

Osama bin Laden and many other “high-value targets” are dead, the drone war is being waged more vigorously than ever, and Guantanamo is still open, so Republicans can hardly say Obama has implemented dramatic and dangerous discontinuities regarding counterterrorism. Obama says that even with his proposed cuts, the defense budget would increase at about the rate of inflation through the next decade. Republicans who think America is being endangered by “appeasement” and military parsimony have worked that pedal on their organ quite enough.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon unveiled budget cuts on Thursday that would slash the size of the U.S. military by eliminating thousands of jobs, mothballing ships and trimming air squadrons in an effort to shift strategic direction and reduce spending by US$487-billion over a decade.

The funding request, which includes painful cuts for many states, sets the stage for a new struggle between President Barack Obama’s administration and Congress over how much the Pentagon should spend on national security as the country tries to curb trillion-dollar budget deficits.

“Make no mistake, the savings we are proposing will impact all 50 states and many districts across America,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told a news conference at the Pentagon. “This will be a test of whether reducing the deficit is about talk or action.”

Panetta, previewing plans that will be formally announced next month, said he would ask for a US$525-billion base budget for the 2013 fiscal year, the first time since September 11, 2001, that the Pentagon has asked for less than the previous year.

Panetta said he would seek US$88.4-billion to support combat operations in Afghanistan, down from $115 billion in 2012 largely due to the end of the war in Iraq and the withdrawal of U.S. forces there at the end of last year.

The budget begins to flesh out a new military strategy announced by the Pentagon earlier this month that calls for a shift in focus from the ground wars of the past decade towards efforts to preserve stability in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East.

It would delay the purchases of weapons like Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon’s largest procurement program, as well as submarines, amphibious assault ships and other vessels.

The Pentagon would increase its emphasis on drone aircraft and would go ahead with a long-range bomber and proceed with other weapons that would allow it to project power from a longer range, a capability needed in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East.

The size of the active-duty Army would be trimmed to 490,000 over five years from its wartime peak of 570,000 in 2010 and the size of the Marine Corps would fall to 182,000 from its high of about 202,000.

Military pay increases would begin to slow after two more years of growth, and fees would be increased on healthcare benefits for military retirees, those who served more than 20 years, both above and below the age of 65.

In addition, the Pentagon would:

Delay development of a new ballistic missile submarine by two years;

Eliminate six of the Air Force’s tactical-air fighter squadrons and retire or divest 130 aircraft used for moving troops and equipment;

Retire seven Navy cruisers and two smaller amphibious ships early, postpone the purchase of a big-deck amphibious ship by one year and postpone the planned purchase of a number of other vessels for several years;

Eliminate two Army heavy brigades stationed in Europe and compensate by rotating U.S. based units into the region for training and exercises.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/pentagon-cuts-reshape-u-s-military-while-trimming-costs/feed2stdU.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta addresses the F-35 Integrated Test Force personnel at the Naval Air Station in Maryland on Jan. 20, 2012.Pentagon plans to cut almost half a trillion dollars in military spending, cancel programshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/pentagon-plans-to-cut-almost-half-a-trillion-dollars-in-military-spending-cancel-p
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/pentagon-plans-to-cut-almost-half-a-trillion-dollars-in-military-spending-cancel-p#commentsWed, 25 Jan 2012 14:34:47 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=133452

By David Alexander and Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will preview a budget proposal this week that begins to implement US$487-billion in spending cuts over the next decade by trimming the size of the military and canceling or scaling back some weapons programs.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will discuss the broad outlines of his budget request for the 2013 fiscal year on Thursday. The proposal is expected to cut US$260-billion in spending through 2017, taking the Pentagon more than halfway to its target for the decade.

The specifics of the Pentagon spending plan will not be formally released until President Barack Obama unveils his budget in February, but some details have begun to emerge from sources familiar with the discussions.

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Cuts in proposed spending are expected to eliminate thousands of military and civilian jobs over the next five years at a time when Obama is running for re-election against a field of Republicans who accuse him of being weak on national security.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama underscored his commitment to maintaining the “finest military in the world,” even as the Pentagon cuts nearly half a trillion dollars from its budget.

The proposed budget will terminate or scale back spending on dozens of weapons programs, including the Air Force’s high-altitude Global Hawk unmanned surveillance plane built by Northrop Grumman Corp and the Pentagon’s biggest weapons program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, built by Lockheed Martin Corp.

But it will not tackle some US$600-billion in additional spending cuts due to take effect in January 2013 after lawmakers failed to agree on US$1.2-trillion in deficit-cutting measures.

Officials say they will revisit the issue and address those cuts later if Congress does not take action this year.

The Pentagon’s base budget is expected to be about US$523-billion, some US$5-billion more than approved in December for the 2012 fiscal year but US$30-billion less than initially planned. The Pentagon is expected to seek about US$82.5-billion for the war in Afghanistan, about US$33-billion less than 2012 largely due to a drawdown in troops.

The budget plan will begin to put into place a new strategy released this month that calls for the Pentagon to shift its focus to the Asia Pacific region and Middle East even as it shrinks the size of the military to create a more agile force.

That is likely to mean more funding for the Air Force and Navy and less for the Army and Marines, a trend that already was projected in last year’s five-year budget, analysts say.

“If they actually accelerate that shift … this really is a shift in strategy,” said Todd Harrison, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank.

VARIOUS PROGRAMS FACING CUTBACKS, OTHERS TO CONTINUE

Under the Pentagon’s new spending plans:

– Lockheed’s F-35 jet fighter program, the Pentagon’s largest at US$382-billion, will face its third restructuring in three years, with officials slashing 179 jets from the five-year budget and pushing their purchase to later years at a savings of more than US$20-billion.

– The Navy will maintain a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers, but has not clarified if it will award a contract to Huntington Ingalls Industries for the next carrier on schedule.

– The number of combat brigades stationed in Europe would be cut in half, from four to two, Panetta said recently.

– The overall size of the Army, which was already scheduled to fall to 520,000 by 2016, could be further reduced to 490,000, a drop of another 30,000 soldiers, analysts say.

– The Navy will retire seven aging cruisers and several amphibious warships, saving money on increasingly expensive maintenance and upgrades.

– It will also propose multiyear procurements of more DDG-51 destroyers and Virginia-class submarines, both built by General Dynamics Corp and Huntington Ingalls, moves that could save about $4 billion by allowing bulk purchases of materials.

– The Navy will also propose a multiyear procurement for more V-22 Ospreys, a tiltrotor aircraft built by Boeing Co and Textron Inc’s Bell Helicopter unit that flies like a plane but takes off and like a helicopter.

– The Air Force will lose several programs, including upgrades to its C-130 cargo planes being done by Boeing Co, a troubled weather satellite being built by Northrop, and a new helicopter to replace the Bell UH-1N, which provides security to U.S. nuclear ballistic missile fields.

– The Air Force will continue design work on a new bomber and get two additional orders for a Lockheed communications satellite, and one more Lockheed missile warning satellite.

– The Army would rebalance its mix of active duty troops and the National Guard and Reserve, which cost less to fund but can be called up more rapidly than reconstituting a force from scratch.

– The Army’s new software-based radio being developed for use in ground vehicles is expected to be cancelled, although the handheld version of the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) will survive.

NO MAJOR PROGRAMS CANCELLED

Despite the expected cutbacks in personnel and programs, analysts said the Pentagon had been able to achieve the spending reductions without sacrificing its most cherished programs.

“Achieving the US$487-billion in cuts was sufficiently doable that it didn’t require really hard decisions … Unless you force them into it, those hard decisions just don’t get made. Everybody buys everything they want,” said retired General James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

That could change if the Pentagon is forced to implement a new round of across-the-board budget cuts, which could lob another US$50-billion annually off defense spending accounts.

If Congress fails to avert those cuts, the Pentagon could be forced to further cut its active force, reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal, halt development of a new bomber and trim the total purchase of F-35s, said Cartwright, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Pentagon says it is not preparing for further budget cuts and has not received instructions from the White House Office of Management and Budget to do so. But the threat of further reductions is real and lack of attention to it is a mistake, analysts warn.

“The failure to plan for deeper budget cuts is really a glaring oversight in the new defense strategy,” Harrison said.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama unveiled a defense strategy on Thursday that would expand the U.S. military presence in Asia but shrink the overall size of the force as the Pentagon seeks to slash spending by nearly half a trillion dollars after a decade of war.

The strategy, if carried out, would significantly reshape the world’s most powerful military following the buildup that was a key part of President George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cyberwarfare and unmanned drones would continue to grow in priority, as would countering attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. power projection capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

But the size of the U.S. Army and Marines Corps would shrink. So too might the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the U.S. military footprint in Europe.

Troop- and time-intensive counter-insurgency operations, a staple of U.S. military strategy since the 2007 “surge” of extra troops to Iraq, would be far more limited.

“The tide of war is receding but the question that this strategy answers is what kind of military will we need long after the wars of the last decade are over,” Obama told a Pentagon news conference alongside Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

The strategy drew varied reactions, with Republican Senator John McCain saying the United States could not afford a “budget-driven defense” and independent Senator Joe Lieberman warning it would “greatly increase the risk” that a U.S. adversary would underestimate the U.S. resolve to fight.

“This is a lead-from-behind strategy for a left-behind America,” said Representative Buck McKeon, Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “The president has packaged our retreat from the world in the guise of a new strategy to mask his divestment of our military and national defense.”

.Click to enlarge this National Post map showing where U.S. forces are stationed around the world.

SMALLER, LEANER

Panetta said the new strategy would mean the Pentagon would field a “smaller and leaner” military force, but added that the exact number of personnel would not be determined until the Defense Department finishes its proposed 2013 budget in the coming weeks.

Administration officials have said they expect Army and Marine Corp personnel levels to be reduced by 10% to 15% over the next decade as part of the reductions.

The Army’s current strength is about 565,000 soldiers and there are 201,000 Marines, meaning an eventual loss of between 76,000 and 114,000 troops.

Panetta acknowledged the Pentagon’s financial constraints would mean difficult choices and trade-offs that would require the United States to take on “some level of additional but acceptable risk in the budget plan we release next month.”

Critics charged that the cuts were driven by budget woes rather than U.S. defense needs.

“The Pentagon is trying to put on a brave face that this is a pure strategy that has informed the 2013 defense budget,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a national security expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

Caren Firouz/ReutersKuwaiti and U.S. soldiers close the border gate after the last vehicle crossed into Kuwait during the US miltary's withdrawal from Iraq December 18, 2011. The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq last month, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left a country still grappling with political uncertainty.

“Everyone knows that the cart was before the horse on this and that Congress and the president picked a budget and this is a strategy to chase down those numbers,” she said.

“This is a classic resource-driven strategy document,” said Gordon Adams, an American University professor who worked on defense budgets in the Clinton administration White House.

“That’s not a criticism, that’s just a reality. It’s inevitable. Strategy always wears a dollar sign,” he said.

Obama and Panetta insisted that the reverse was true and that strategy would inform the spending decisions. But they did not divulge details of spending and cuts, which will be released as part of Obama’s upcoming federal budget for fiscal year 2013.

The president emphasized that even after enactment of the $487 billion in reductions over 10 years that was agreed with Congress in August, the defense budget would still be larger than it was toward the end of Bush’s administration.

“Over the past 10 years, since 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace,” Obama said. “Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow but the fact of the matter is this – it will still grow because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership.”

The shift in focus to Asia comes amid increasing concern at the Pentagon over China’s strategic goals as it begins to field a new generation of weapons that American officials fear are designed to prevent U.S. naval and air forces from projecting power into the Far East.

The new strategy also calls for increased investment in cyber capabilities and suggests the United States may be able to shrink its nuclear arsenal further without jeopardizing security, a statement welcomed by arms control groups and some lawmakers.

Reuters/U.S. Navy handoutThis file photo dated Nov. 12, 2011 shows U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis transiting the Straits of Hormuz near where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is currently stationed.

ONE WAR, TWO WARS

The strategy says the United States should maintain a force that can win one major war while still being able to deter an aggressor in a second conflict. In the past the Pentagon has tried to field a force that could fight and win two major wars at once.

Panetta played down the differences, saying the earlier strategy dealt with large conflicts of the past while the current strategy was considering the conflicts the United States is likely to face in the 21st century.

“Make no mistake — we will have the capability to confront and defeat more than one adversary at a time,” he said.

But Representative Mike Coffman, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, expressed alarm over the shift in U.S. posture, saying, “I believe we can make cuts that don’t reduce capability,” a concern that was echoed by Lieberman.

The strategy underscores the United States’ “enduring interests” in Europe and the importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization but says the force posture in Europe must “evolve” with the changing times, opening the door for troop reductions.

Administration officials have said the United States is likely to further reduce the number of ground forces in Europe by another combat brigade, a unit of 3,000 to 4,000 people depending on its composition.

The strategy also highlights the U.S. interest in maintaining stability in the Middle East while responding to the aspirations of the people as expressed in the “Arab spring” last year. It also says the United States will continue working to halt nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/new-u-s-military-strategy-focuses-on-cyberwarfare-unmanned-drones/feed5stdUS President Barack Obama, alongside Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (L) and Chief of Staff of the Army General Raymond Odierno (C) speaks about the Defense Strategic Review, outlining Defense budget priorities and cuts, during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, January 5, 2012.United-Bases-of-AmericaKuwaiti and U.S. soldiers close the border gate after the last vehicle crossed into Kuwait during the US miltary's withdrawal from Iraq December 18, 2011. The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq on Sunday, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left a country still grappling with political uncertainty. This file photo dated Nov. 12, 2011 shows U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis transiting the Straits of Hormuz.Cloak of invisibility developed by Pentagon physicists can ‘bend time’http://news.nationalpost.com/news/cloak-announced-by-pentagon-aims-to-make-someone-invisible-by-bending-time
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/cloak-announced-by-pentagon-aims-to-make-someone-invisible-by-bending-time#commentsWed, 04 Jan 2012 18:00:47 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=125840

PARIS — Pentagon-supported physicists on Wednesday said they had devised a “time cloak” that briefly makes an event undetectable.

The laboratory device manipulates the flow of light in such a way that for the merest fraction of a second an event cannot be seen, according to a paper published in the science journal Nature.

It adds to experimental work in creating next-generation camouflage — a so-called invisibility cloak in which specific colours cannot be perceived by the human eye.

“Our results represent a significant step towards obtaining a complete spatio-temporal cloaking device,” says the study, headed by Moti Fridman of Cornell University in New York.

The breakthrough exploits the fact that frequencies of light move at fractionally different speeds.

The so-called temporal cloak starts with a beam of green light that is passed down a fibre-optic cable.

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The beam goes through a two-way lens that splits it into two frequencies — blueish light which travels relatively fast, and reddish light, which is slower.

The tiny difference in speed is then accentuated by placing a transparent obstacle in front of the two beams.

Eventually a time gap opens up between the red and blue beams as they travel through the optical fibre.

The gap is tiny — just 50 picoseconds, or 50 millionths of a millionth of a second.

But it is just long enough to squeeze in a pulse of laser at a different frequency from the light passing through the system.

The red and blue light are then given the reverse treatment.

They go through another obstacle, which this time speeds up the red and slows down the blue, and come to a reverse lens that reconstitutes them as a single green light.

But the 40-picosecond burst of laser is not part of the flow of photons, and thus cannot be detected.

In a commentary, optical engineers Robert Boyd and Zhimin Shi of New York’s University of Rochester, likened the experiment to a level crossing on a busy road.

When a train comes, the cars are stopped, and this causes a gap in the traffic.

When the train has passed, the stopped cars speed up until they catch up with the traffic in front of them. To the observer, the flow seems quite normal, and there is no evidence that a train has crossed the intersection.

After proving that the “cloak” is possible, the next step for the researchers is to expand the time gap by orders of magnitude, firstly to microseconds and then to milliseconds, said Boyd and Shi.

The time cloak has a potential use in boosting security in fibre-optic communications because it breaks up optical signals, lets them travel at different speeds and then reassembles them, which makes data hard to intercept.

Last year, scientists reported a step forward in so-called metamaterials which act as a cloaking of space, as opposed to time.

Metamaterials are novel compounds whose surface that interacts with light at specific frequencies thanks to a tiny, nano-level structure. As a result, light flows around the object — rather like water that bends around a rock in a stream — as opposed to being absorbed by it.

Fridman’s work was part-supported by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, a Pentagon unit which develops futuristic technology that can have a military use. Its achievements include DARPANet, a predecessor of the Internet.

Though it many be years before Iran becomes an overt nuclear weapon state, Tehran “is already close enough to obtaining a nuclear weapon to be considered a de facto nuclear country,” says a new study by the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Centre.

Using data released last month by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles and UN reports on Iran’s recent non-nuclear weapons research, U.S. weapons expert Gregory Jones said, “Iran is a de facto nuclear weapon state [and] there is little that can be done except to hope [to] maintain control over their nuclear weapons.”

“If Iran were to now make an all-out effort to acquire nuclear weapons, it could probably do so in two to six months,” he said.

“However, given the ineffectiveness of Western counteraction thus far, Iran has no need to make such an all-out effort. Rather Iran will probably continue on its current course, producing an ever growing stockpile of enriched uranium and carrying out additional research to produce non-nuclear weapons components.”

The study says Iran is on the brink of tripling production of 19.7% enriched uranium that can be rapidly refined to weapons’ grade.

“Using Iran’s currently operating centrifuges at the [Natanz] Fuel Enrichment Plant, the batch recycling (to make weapons grade enriched uranium) would take about two months,” Mr. Jones said.

If Iran has an as-yet undetected clandestine nuclear enrichment facility, it might be able to speed that process up.

The report notes IAEA inspectors believe Iran has been working secretly with a Russian weapons scientists, identified as Vyacheslav Danilenko, to develop a sophisticated “multipoint” nuclear trigger for a bomb and is “now in a position to build nuclear weapons that are significantly lighter and have a smaller diameter.

Smaller, lighter weapons would allow Iran to place nuclear bombs on the warheads of medium- and long-range ballistic missiles.

“In light of the IAEA’s information about Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons and in particular, Iran’s acquisition of a multipoint initiations system from a Russian nuclear scientist, it is clear that Iran is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons,” the study says.

Mr. Jones estimates it will take “between two and six months before Iran could have the non-nuclear components for a nuclear weapon ready for use.”

But he says missile deliverability is not a necessary requirement for any Iranian nuclear weapon.

“There are other viable means for Iran to be able to deliver a nuclear weapon,” the study says. “Unfortunately, vehicle delivery of bombs [up to now all conventional] has become quite common in the region and many such attacks have been carried out.”

Mr. Jones’ report was released just as the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy (AEI) published a report that concludes, “There is a real chance that Western efforts to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon will fail.”

The conservative Washington think-tank spent six months studying Iran’s nuclear threat. It says any serious U.S. policy on Iran must operate on the assumption Iran will become a full-fledged nuclear power by 2013.

Days after he was elected, Barack Obama, the U.S. President, declared a nuclear Iran was unacceptable. He has repeatedly pledged “to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.”

Now, U.S. analysts seem to be pivoting away from a policy of deterrence to one of containment.

But the AEI study warns “containment is hardly a cost-free policy” and says “little thought has gone into what an effective containment and deterrent regime will require of the United States and its allies.”

Any coherent containment policy “should seek to block any Iranian expansion in the Persian Gulf,” “induce a retraction of Iranian influence” and “work toward a political – if not physical – transformation of the Tehran regime,” it adds.

That could require “a constant and significant conventional force presence around Iran’s perimeter.”

But with pending budget cuts and U.S. military drawdowns in the Middle East, Washington may not be in a position to conduct a full-fledged containment operation against Iran, the AEI warns.

“Consider the military costs alone: a renewed offensive nuclear deterrent, both in the United States and extended to the region; prolonged counterintelligence, counterterrorist and counterinsurgency operations around Iran’s perimeter; a large and persistent conventional covering force operating throughout the region and a reinforcing force capable of assured regime change; and energetic military-to-military programs with coalition partners,” the report says.

“Such a deterrent posture is not only near or beyond the limits of current U.S. forces, but also would certainly surpass the capabilities of the reduced U.S. military that proposed budget cuts would produce.”

The argument that U.S. President Barack Obama is a spineless wimp who has been embarrassing the U.S. by projecting an image of weakness around the world, which ran into some difficulty explaining the war in Libya, the expansion of drone raids into Pakistan and the assassination of Osama bin Laden and U.S.-born terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, has some more difficult material to contend with.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. is planning the provide thousands of “bunker-buster” bombs to the United Arab Emirates as part of a strategy to fence in Iran and its effort to obtain nuclear technology.

The Pentagon is considering a significant sale of Joint Direct Attack Munitions made by Boeing, adding to other recent arms deals with the UAE. Those included the sale of 500 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles about which the US Congress was notified in September.

… The proposed sale, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, would expand the existing capabilities of UAE’s air force to target buildings such as the bunkers and tunnels where Iran is believed to be developing nuclear or other weapons. The newspaper said Washington was eyeing the sale of 4,900 of the so-called smart bombs.

The sale is part of an effort to build a defensive wall among Iran’s neighbours, which fear its aggressive government and its destabilizing activities in the region.

Recent arms deals approved by the administration include a record £40 billion plan to sell Saudi Arabia advanced F-15 aircraft, some 2,000-lb JDAMs and other powerful munitions.
The U.S. government also approved the sale of a £4.2 billion terminal missile defence program to UAE that would be built by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Washington has also sought to build up missile-defence systems across the region, with the goal of building an integrated network to defend against short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles from Iran.

The UAE has a fleet of advanced US-made F-16 fighters, also built by Lockheed, that could carry the JDAMs.

In addition to the Gulf, Washington has also reached an agreement with Australia for a permanent military presence there, as a counterweight to China’s growing military influence. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Barack Obama is to announce that the U.S. will begin rotating Marines through an Australian base in Darwin in a permanent new military presence, intensifying the alliance in a sign of heightened concern about China.

He is scheduled to make the announcement with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, when they visit Darwin next Thursday during Mr Obama’s first visit to Australia as president. The 26-hour visit will mark the 60th anniversary of the ANZUS alliance.

The Marines are the chief US ground combat force in the Pacific theatre, the so-called ”tip of the spear”.

…”This is all about the rise of China, the modernisation of the People’s Liberation Army and, particularly, it’s about the increased vulnerability of US forces in Japan and Guam to the new generation of Chinese missiles,” said Alan Dupont, the Michael Hintze professor of international security at Sydney University.

”The new Chinese missiles could threaten them in a way they’ve never been able to before, so the US is starting to reposition them to make them less vulnerable. Australia’s ‘tyranny of distance’ is now a distinct strategic advantage.”

The expanded presence is taking place at a time that both U.S. parties are looking for ways to cut spending, with the Pentagon as a likely target. If talks by a Congressional “supercommittee” fail to identify agreed-on areas of savings by Nov. 23, it will trigger harsh cuts to the Pentagon budget. Obama’s build-up may make that additionally unappetizing for Republican members of the committee, who view defense spending as sacrosanct.

It also makes it additionally difficult to portray Obama as anything but a hawk, which is perhaps why Republican presidential candidates have largely stayed away from the subject.

Over the next two months, tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq will pack up their gear and head home, ending nine years of war and a painful era of American history.

Under the terms of a 2008 bilateral security pact, about 39,000 U.S. soldiers and 38,500 private contractors employed by the Pentagon are scheduled to leave Iraq before the year is out, emptying the last 15 U.S. military bases in the country.

The withdrawal ends a military occupation which, at its height, saw 170,000 U.S. soldiers in 505 bases in Iraq as recently as 2007.

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In some quarters, the troop drawdown is regarded as an admission of defeat and a politically expedient end to a highly unpopular and costly war. In others, it is regarded as a recalibration of American military might — a mere adaptation to shifting priorities and threats.

Despite the pending troop withdrawals in Iraq and those in Afghanistan between now and 2014, the United States remains a superpower on a scale not seen since the days of the Caesars.

According to an annual Pentagon inventory of the real estate it owns or leases around the world, the U.S. military maintains 716 overseas bases in 62 countries. At its height, the British Empire had military bases in only about 35 countries and colonies.

But the Pentagon’s official list of bases does not include troop numbers and structures in Iraq and Afghanistan or secret unacknowledged bases in places like Israel, Kuwait, Qatar or central Asia.

Official base figures deliberately exclude espionage bases — those located in war zones or miscellaneous facilities, like the multibillion-dollar Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar — from which U.S. forces wage worldwide drone warfare. They are deemed just too sensitive to discuss.

“The global reach of the U.S. military today is unprecedented and unparalleled,” said Catherine Lutz of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and editor of the book, The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle Against U.S. Military Posts.

Washington boasts a vast network of military bases that dominate every continent except Antarctica and deploys more than 500,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, spies and private defence contractors in a chain of bases and staging areas around the globe.

Unlike any imperial power in history, the United States is unrivalled militarily, able to strike and project power at a moment’s notice, virtually anywhere.

Huge advances in military technology have nourished the roots of American power. Equipped with the most advanced precision-guided munitions, high-performance aircraft and intercontinental-range missiles, its military can deliver death and destruction anywhere on Earth, with little to fear in the way of retaliation.

The unsurpassed global reach of its high-tech sword was demonstrated in Afghanistan in 2001 when U.S. Special Forces rode into battle on horseback or were walking through the Afghan mountains within weeks of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The commandos would spy a Taliban target, type its map co-ordinates into a laptop computer and send them via a satellite phone to a spy drone circling thousands of feet overhead. The information would be relayed to a military command post in Saudi Arabia and to computer controllers in the United States, then to bombers dispatched to Afghanistan from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

In as little as 19 minutes, the U.S. military could identify and obliterate a target with a blizzard of precision-guided munitions.

But that lethal power comes at a cost. Defence spending is the largest element of the U.S. budget and is now equal to the military spending of all other countries in the world combined. Since 9/11, military and security spending in the United States has soared by more than 119%.

But over the next two decades the cost of servicing the country’s national debt and providing pensions and health care to retiring Baby Boomers will outstrip the ability of U.S. taxpayers to maintain current levels of defence spending.

“With Americans sending more tax dollars to Washington and getting less in return, they will be less generous in supporting not only defence spending, but also diplomacy, foreign aid and the other tools of U.S. foreign policy,” said Michael Mandelbaum of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of the book Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era.

“A smaller defence budget and less ambitious international commitments won’t necessarily herald the end of America’s era as a global superpower. But they do mean that we will have to be much more selective about where and how we deploy our military and diplomatic resources.”

As a result, pressures are growing to cut the U.S. deficit by trimming the Pentagon’s $550-billion annual budget by consolidating or closing overseas bases.

Last week, in a rare display of bipartisanship, U.S. senators Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican from Texas, introduced legislation calling for creation of a new national commission to “scrutinize the necessity of the United States’ current overseas basing structure” and do a cost-benefit analysis on closing multiple overseas bases.

“With today’s historic levels of debt, we need to move quickly to identify ways that we can bring our military training capabilities home, create American jobs in military construction and save taxpayer dollars without sacrificing the security needs of U.S. forces and the American people,” Ms. Hutchison said.

Barney Frank, a Democratic Representative from Massachusetts, is spearheading a similar drive to restructure U.S. military bases in Europe.

“NATO was a wonderful concept,” he said. “But 61 years later, I think it is time to say our Western European allies should be on their own. We’ll co-operate with them, but we shouldn’t be subsidizing their defence.”

A recent study by the Center for American Progress in Washington recommends cutting U.S. troop strength in Europe and Asia by a third, for savings of up to US$40-billion by 2016.

Still, budget watching and base closings could have a dramatic impact on overall U.S. foreign policy.

“In a cash-strapped era, the kind of operations we’ve launched since the end of the Cold War are increasingly unaffordable,” Prof. Mandelbaum said.

“From Somalia through Haiti and the Balkans and into Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s recent military interventions have sprung from a variety of motives but produced a common result: All entangled the United States in the frustrating, protracted and expensive task of nation-building.”

Before he retired this summer as U.S. defence secretary, Robert Gates warned Congress closing bases overseas could create strategic risk.

“The biggest policy question that has to be asked is what kind of signal do you want to send the rest of the world,” he told the Senate’s Appropriations Committee.

“Are we basically sending the message to the rest of the world, to China, to Iran, to North Korea — that the U.S. is closing up and heading home? What kind of a role do you want for the United States in the world?”

If every idea uttered around moderator Charlie Rose’s table was made into law tomorrow, the financial-regulation bill would be gone, as would health-care reform and the Federal Reserve. The tax credits that support the housing market would vanish, and so too would Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed housing giants that guarantee the majority of new loans. There would be a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, which would require more than $1 trillion in spending cuts if it was to be satisfied in 2013, and China would be branded a currency manipulator.

It is hard to predict the effect all of that would have on the economy. The housing sector, which is already weak, would probably freeze. The financial markets, which depend heavily on the central bank’s management of the economy, would be in uncharted territory. The tax code would be completely different. Businesses would no longer be able to offer health care to their employees without paying taxes on it, which would kick the struts out from under the employer-based health-care market that provides insurance to more than 150 million Americans.

So what would be left to be president of? Oh yeah — the Pentagon. But the Pentagon would be untouchable, so there goes that. Presumably the president would still be able to preside at the annual reprieve of the Thanksgiving turkey and the lighting of the Christmas tree. The rest of the year … lots of golf.